The Latin American Network Art for social transformation Making political action being art and making art being a political action

Preliminary statement:

The Latin American Network of Art for Social Transformation (RLATS) was founded in 2005 by

24 artistic, cultural and social organizations. It currently brings together 62 organizations from

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras

and El Salvador. These organizations offer an innovative and multidisciplinary spectrum of

artistic proposals responding to contexts of poverty and social exclusion that express

themselves through concrete artistic practices sustained by an organizational structure that

allows them to act as a collective platform for the mobilization of different social players towards

public causes such as social integration, effective citizenship, human rights, multicultural

dialogue and social equity.

In a region where half of the people is living in poverty contexts, the common dream of the

artists of RLATS has made possible the following achievements: communities reactivated

through cultural centers, young people from marginal neighborhoods becomimg the stars of

music festivals around the world and social/cultural leaders of their communities, choirs and

orchestras performing in the middle of the Amazonian jungle, acrobats and jugglers transferring

their know-how to their European peers, street performances in rural zones that had never

attended a theatre or dance function, delighting different audiences, aboriginal communities

recovering the memory of their ancestors through their tapestries and other artistic expressions,

youth and professionals traveling throughout Latin America and Europe, sharing their

experience.

We are now moving towards the generation of cross border artistic-cultural collective projects in

the region that are being developed by the platform of the Latin American Network of Art for

Social Transformation to offer possible solutions to global causes in Latin America.

Ten lines of action:

1. Development of creativity applied to symbolical break up and social innovation.

2. New ways of production, circulation and consumption of cultural goods, involving excluded

and non-excluded communities.

3. New pedagogies for transformation: action creativity, game, alignment, innovation,

otherness, conflict, diversity, improvisation, intuition, synchronization, flow, identifying

what’s new among us.

4. Empowering the people in contexts of vulnerability: construction of subjectivity. intangible

goods and social representations.

5. Global perspective and effective enforcement of rights.

6. Complexity: interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approach to artistic production and artistic

education. Alliances with other sectors in order to meet development requirements.

7. Social organization: artistic productions and artistic education supported by community

mobilization and organization.

8. Art as a good for itself, not merely as a tool.

9. Intellect broadening practices: new conceptual developments as new forms of knowledge

production trough the practice of arts.

10. New institutional models and development of new contexts of sociability: public-private

scenarios.